SPEC Kit 325: Digital Preservation (October 2011)
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SPEC Kit 325: Digital Preservation · 9 Executive Summary Introduction ARL member libraries increasingly create, acquire, disseminate, and curate both digitized and born digi- tal content. As a result, they have a growing awareness of and a pressing need for information on field-wide activities and plans to support the life cycle needs of these digital collections. Until now, however, rela- tively little information has been gathered or reported about ARL libraries’ digital preservation practices and policies. This was the first SPEC survey to focus on the preservation of digital, rather than physical, materi- als. The definition of digital preservation includes the policies, strategies, and actions that ensure access to digital content over time. The survey sought to identify the strategies that ARL member institutions use to protect evolving re- search collections and to describe the roles and re- sponsibilities of stakeholders. It asked ARL libraries about their digital content, their strategies for preserv- ing that content, and the staff, time, and funding they currently devote to digital preservation. It also asked each responding library to compare its digital preser- vation activities of three years ago to current activities and project three years into the future. In addition, to better understand the roles of research libraries in the emergent field of digital curation, the survey sought to identify issues that are and are not being addressed through current practices and policies. The survey was conducted between March 14 and April 18, 2011. Sixty-four ARL members completed the survey for a response rate of 51%. Using the survey data and open-ended comments, this report sum- marizes how those libraries currently think about the preservation of their digital collections and what preservation activities they are now undertaking. Digital Content The survey asked what types of digital content the li- brary licenses or manages for its institution and which content it is investing in for the purpose of preserva- tion. Almost every library responding to this survey is responsible for managing digitized special collections, licensed materials (e.g., ejournals and databases), still images, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), moving images, and audio materials. Fewer than a third identified research data (including data sets and geospatial data), mass digitization collections, or art databases as current responsibilities, and only a hand- ful manage web-harvested materials (19 or 30%) or computer games (12 or 19%). Eighty percent of the responding libraries (51 of 64) now preserve some of their digital content and anoth- er 16% plan to do so in the future. One astute respon- dent commented, “This content [we have purchased or licensed from publishers] represents a significant investment of resources, whether financial, staff, or technology.” Another pointed out that ensuring in- vestments in digital preservation is “our only way to guarantee continued access to (scholarly) information in the future.” Only three respondents are not planning to pre- serve digital content at all. They cited the lack of ex- perienced staff, funding for hardware and software, and institution-wide policies and strategies for digital preservation as significant barriers to preservation. Support, and ultimately approval from upper admin- istration, for policies and strategies is deemed critical. The categories of digital resources that most librar- ies are managing for their institutions are also the resources that most have chosen to preserve: digitized special collections, still images, ETDs, audio materials,